The Patriots

by James Taylor

RINOs who apparently weren't much to begin with.

Unfortunately, a handful of congressional Republicans foolishly joined with Democrats to form a group known as the Climate Solutions Caucus. The Caucus claims to support “economically viable” options to restrict carbon-dioxide emissions.

Apparently, the Republicans in the Caucus believe they can walk a tightrope by calling for both severe restrictions on carbon-dioxide emissions and “affordable” energy options — even though these two competing goals are incompatible. Any means of reducing carbon-dioxide emissions would be economically punitive. Rather than trying to appeal to both sides of the political fence, Republicans who join the Caucus are shooting themselves in the foot with liberals and conservatives alike.

Liberal Republican congressman Carlos Curbelo (FL) co-founded the Caucus at the urging of the leftist Citizens’ Climate Lobby (CCL). The CCL advocates for carbon-dioxide taxes that would immediately raise the cost of all traditional energy sources. Within a decade, the CCL taxes would add more than a dollar per gallon to the price of gasoline, with similar and higher price hikes imposed on other forms of energy. CCL trumpets a social-justice-warrior agenda and routinely advocates for left-wing policies. Why in the world would Republicans sign on to these radical ideas by joining forces with CCL?

Caucus members should know economically viable carbon-dioxide restrictions are a fallacy. Conventional energy sources such as coal, oil, and natural gas dominate because they are substantially more concentrated, affordable, and reliable than wind and solar power. Whether accomplished through government mandates or taxes, transforming our economy from one running on affordable energy sources to one that’s dependent on expensive and unreliable energy would severely punish all consumers and industries.

Some global warming activists attempt to argue a carbon-dioxide tax could be revenue-neutral and thus economy-friendly. However, there’s no credibility to this claim. The whole point of a carbon-dioxide tax is to drive up conventional energy prices so high that consumers won’t purchase them anymore and will instead buy already-expensive wind and solar power. When this occurs, consumers pay higher prices directly to energy providers rather than in government taxes — thus, there is little or no direct government tax revenue collected or returned to consumers to compensate for their higher energy bills. Even worse, energy bills skyrocket and disposable income falls. Even if a carbon dioxide tax were crafted to be “revenue-neutral,” it could never be crafted to be “pocketbook-neutral” or “household budget-neutral.”

So, if these policies are surely doomed to fail, what is motivating Republicans to join the Caucus? For most members, the answer appears to be virtue-signaling and political calculation. Some Republicans believe that expressing concern about global warming will soften their appeal to liberal and moderate voters.

However, polls consistently show voters rank global warming among their least-important concerns. Thus, virtue-signaling on global warming will win over very few, if any, liberal or moderate voters. On the other hand, Republicans joining the Caucus will ostracize their conservative base, encouraging them to stay at home or vote for a third party. These naive GOP members also face a greater risk of drawing a strong challenge from the right in their next Republican primary.

Fortunately, very few Republicans side with Al Gore and the United Nations. The vast majority of GOP congressmen do not believe in a global warming crisis and continue to reject the drumbeat of government intervention promoted by environmental zealots.

The few Republicans on the Caucus represent the liberal fringe of the party. In fact, these Republicans have voted for liberal positions more than conservative positions, according to the Heritage Action “Congressional Scorecard.” By contrast, 84 percent of Republicans who are not part of the Caucus have voted in favor of the conservative position more often than the liberal position. Thus, a good way to determine whether your Republican congressional representative is a RINO — a “Republican in name only” — is to check if he or she is a member of the Caucus.

Republicans should think long and hard before joining the Climate Solutions Caucus. Simply put, the Climate Solutions Caucus is a lose-lose-lose proposition.

by Lisa Payne-Naeger

Levi Strauss & Co. has expanded their original mission beyond the manufacture of blue jeans. This “values driven company” now feels a responsibility to “the communities where we live and work” and will now engage with other gun control groups to fight for “gun violence prevention.”

Chip Berg, CEO of Levi Strauss, wrote an open letter to his customers asking them not to bring firearms onto the premises of their stores, offices or other facilities. For him, it was a matter of safety. Of course, law enforcement was exempt from that request.

“It boils down to this: you shouldn’t have to be concerned about your safety while shopping for clothes or trying on a pair of jeans. Simply put, firearms don’t belong in either of those settings. In the end, I believe we have an obligation to our employees and customers to ensure a safe environment and keeping firearms out of our stores and offices will get us one step closer to achieving that reality.”

So, it’s clear Berg doesn’t subscribe to the theory that the best way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.

Berg took it a step farther today with an op-ed in Fortune. He explained that as a leader in business “with power in the public and political arenas” he felt the responsibility to break the silence that threatens “the very fabric of the communities where we live and work.”

“So today, on top of our previous actions, Levi Strauss & Co. is lending its support for gun violence prevention in three new areas.”

The company has developed a site that outlines its gun violence prevention strategy complete with mission statements and donation match programs.

“So today, on top of our previous actions, Levi Strauss & Co. is lending its support for gun violence prevention in three new areas.”

The company has developed a site that outlines its gun violence prevention strategy complete with mission statements and donation match programs.

This coalition of like minded executives “has a critical role to play in and a moral obligation to do something about the gun violence epidemic in this country. I encourage every CEO and business leader reading this to consider the impact we could make if we stood together alongside the broad coalition of concerned parents, youth, elders, veterans, and community and faith leaders who are committed to shaping a safer path forward.”

He doesn’t explain any particular plan of action for the Every Town organization other than to infer there may be some think-tank like discussions on how to end gun violence.

And the third leg of the stool involves employee participation. Levi Strauss is doubling its employee donation match to any organizations aligned with its own Safer Tomorrow Fund.

In addition to encouraging employee donations to their own foundation, they are offering to compensate any employee who wishes to volunteer time up to five hours a month. Not only can employees volunteer in their own foundations but political activism is also compensated as well.

Levi Strauss considers this compensation an encouragement to employees “to use their time to make an impact.”

Berg notes that Levi Strauss has always been on the cutting edge of progressivism ideals in company policy and some not so progressive. But he thinks this one will prove to be the right stand in history.

“As a company, we have never been afraid to take an unpopular stand to support a greater good. We integrated our factories in the American South years before the Civil Rights Act was passed. We offered benefits to same-sex partners in the 1990s, long before most companies did. We pulled our financial support for the Boy Scouts of America when it banned gay troop leaders.

“While each one of these stands may have been controversial at the time, history proved the company right in the long run. And I’m convinced that while some will disagree with our stand to end gun violence, history will prove this position right too.”

Mr. Berg, no one disagrees with your stand to end gun violence. Gun violence is a terrible thing.

We just don’t want anyone to eliminate our constitutional right to bear arms at a time when law enforcement officers can’t get to your offices, stores or factories in time to stop mass shooters who would attack innocents in a gun free zone — hypothetically of course.

Has anyone ever asked these social justice warrior business leaders why they can’t coalesce around decreasing the national debt, lowering taxes, returning to state sovereignty, or any number of other things that also “threaten the very fabric of the communities where we live and work?”

by Dr. Orly Taitz, ESQ

On Oct 30, 2018 President Trump announced that he will issue an executive order to end birthright citizenship. He states that he can do it by executive action and he might be right.

The 14th amendment states:

“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”

Now, an important point in it is the fact that people, who are foreign citizens, are subject to the jurisdiction of their own nations, not US. Their children automatically inherit the citizenship of the countries of their parents, not US, and they automatically are under the jurisdiction of those foreign nations.

One wrinkle is a decision of the Supreme Court over 100 year ago.

A 1898 Supreme Court decision held that Wong Kim Ark, who was born in San Francisco to Chinese parents residing in the United States, was a citizen because of his birth on American soil.

There can be 2 rebuttals to Wong Kim Ark.

1.Wong Kim Ark’s parents were legal residents, the ruling should not be read as an affirmation of the status of children of undocumented immigrants.

2. The Supreme Court might disavow, overturn this precedent as it was done by overturning 1857 decision in Dred Scott v Sandford. Supreme Court might decide that the decision in Wong Kim Ark needs to be clarified in that a child follows the legal immigration status of his parents. If the parents are legal residents, the child gets status of a legal resident, if the parent is a foreign citizen illegally residing in the US, the child is a foreign resident illegally residing in the US.  Supreme Court might decide that this clarification is needed as birthright citizenship is a magnet that led to an invasion of millions of illegal aliens with the hope of having anchor babies.

According to the US government we have 12 million illegals. According to the Center for immigration studies and the former ambassador of Mexico, we have over 30 million illegals, which is an enormous burden on our welfare system and which causes wages to stagnate.

Energy, environment, and climate reporting at the usually solid Washington Examiner are increasingly taking on the left’s language and agenda. Why are the Examiner’s two lead energy and climate reporters advancing leftist politics rather than straight reporting, and why is the paper allowing this to happen?

In June 2017, the Examiner hired Josh Siegel to join John Siciliano covering energy, environment, and climate news. Siciliano had a solid track record of just-the-facts reporting and had worked as a reporter for The Daily Signal, the multimedia news organization of the conservative think tank, The Heritage Foundation.

Two months after bringing Siegel on board, the Examiner launched Siegel and Siciliano’s “Daily on Energy” report, with each day’s edition containing several short write-ups of energy, environment, and climate issues. Lengthier versions of many of the short write-ups later appeared in the Examiner as stand-alone articles.

Shifting Toward Politicized Language

Since launching the report, Siegel and Siciliano have taken a significant turn toward the political left. Its substance, tone, word choice, and quoted sources consistently advance leftist messaging on energy, environment, and climate issues.

For example, in news articles regarding the Trump administration’s proposal to enhance energy grid reliability by crediting coal and nuclear power for being on-demand power sources with on-site fuel storage, Siegel and Siciliano consistently refer to the proposal as “the coal bailout.” While anti-coal activists can make a shaky argument that assigning monetary value to electric grid security is a “bailout” for the energy sources that provide that security, the argument is exactly that–a political argument.

Siegel and Siciliano refer to the proposal matter-of-factly as “the coal bailout,” as if such a label was factual and beyond dispute rather than a loaded political argument. Just as strikingly, Siegel and Siciliano never use the term “bailout” to describe wind and solar power or the many government programs, subsidies, and policies that benefit them, even though wind and solar power receive more subsidies than all conventional energy sources combined.

When reporting on Sen. Marco Rubio noting that sea level rise will continue, regardless of reductions in carbon dioxide emissions, Siegel and Siciliano cite the aggressively leftist Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) in an attempt to rebut Rubio. Worse yet, they present the UCS as an objective arbiter of scientific disputes. The journalists claim, in their October 15 report, “What the science says about sea level rise: The Union of Concerned Scientists last week published a report…” (emphasis in the original).

Using Leftist Language To Talk About Climate Science

Siegel and Siciliano also use the left’s biased and loaded language when discussing global warming. In their October 10 report, they write that President Trump “has denied climate science.” Trump has never said there is no such thing as climate science, which would be the factual definition of “denying climate science.” Trump acknowledges climate science exists; he merely sides with the many thousands of scientists who are skeptical about predictions of an imminent crisis.

Moreover, the term “denier” was inserted into the global warming debate by environmental leftists who want a more loaded term than “skeptics” to vilify people who are skeptical of alarming global warming predictions. The term was reportedly chosen in an effort to equate skeptics of an imminent global warming crisis with contemptibly racist Holocaust deniers, which is historically the most common use of the term “denier” in the political context.

Siegel and Siciliano are likely familiar with the history of the term and the strong objection skeptics take to being unfairly besmirched by it. Yet they still used it to describe Trump.

On October 18, the two journalists released another biased and inaccurate criticism of Trump on climate issues. They wrote, “Trump on Tuesday continued to falsely assert that the science is unsettled on climate change and its causes…” Yet the causes of climate change are very unsettled.

For example, a 2016 survey of more than 4,000 American Meteorological Society meteorologists reveals 33 percent believe humans are not responsible for most or all of the earth’s recent warming. Even among the 67 percent, many undoubtedly believe a warming earth will not create the climate catastrophe the the environmental left predicts.

Moreover, every new publication by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) contains different predictions than the previous publication, and each report explicitly states there is a degree of uncertainty in its predictions. In fact, IPCC predictions of future climate change have dropped significantly over the years, from a prediction in its initial report, in 1990, of 0.3 degrees Celsius warming per decade, to its current prediction of 0.2 degrees per decade.

Real world observations also show temperatures are rising closer to 0.15 degrees per decade, which defies the predictions in all of the IPCC reports. Yet Siegel and Siciano state that it is false to claim there is scientific uncertainty regarding global warming.

In their same October 18 report, Siegel and Siciliano launched a cheap personal attack on Trump, using a false global warming narrative as a hook. They write that, during a recent media interview, Trump “claimed he has a ‘natural instinct for science’ because his uncle worked as a professor at MIT.”

While Trump claimed a natural instinct for science, and noted earlier in the conversation that his uncle was a professor at MIT, Trump did not say he has a natural instinct because his uncle was a professor at MIT. Siegel and Siciliano’s inaccurate description, while subtle, tells a false narrative that clearly conveys ridicule for a person who he believes his uncle’s work at MIT automatically makes him an expert.

But that is not what Trump said at all. It is difficult to believe such an error, and one that appears designed to ridicule Trump, appeared accidentally.

Why So Biased?

Many more examples exist. Why have Siegel and Siciliano deviated from objective reporting and taken on the left’s language and agenda? People would be forgiven for expecting that from the New York Times or the Huffington Post, but the Washington Examiner? The paper, like the Wall Street Journal, has a conservative editorial board and has historically aimed its news reporting at the middle. But this kind of reporting is not the middle. It better reflects the typical media bias towards the left that the Examiner has built a reputation contrasting with fairer reporting.

Is there a hidden follow-the-money story here? Is there an editor pushing these reporters in a leftist direction? Is this an example of two reporters succumbing to the leftist ideology that is so pervasive inside the Beltway? Or is this just an example of the Washington, D.C. political swamp rearing its ugly head? I don’t know, but it is tragic and sad that the political left has subverted the energy, environment, and climate reporting of a respected newspaper.

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James Taylor is senior fellow for environment policy and vice president for external relations at The Heartland Institute.